Since the Reformation, using incense in church has become a true badge of Catholicism in the West, even though its use is not discussed widely by the Reformers. Eastern Orthodox Christians simply take it for granted. John Calvin lumped it in with all kinds of other vain ceremonial trappings including “holy garments” and even “an altar” in his commentary on the Gospel of John. To Calvin, the worship “in spirit and in truth” that Jesus describes to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:23 has been completely obscured by popery, whose “shadows are not less thick than they formerly were under the Jewish religion.” To Calvin, religion is not about stuff.
Calvin is wrong. As Thomas Aquinas’s hymn Pange Lingua reminds us, “Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here.” The new perfects the old, and worship in spirit and in truth is absolutely about stuff (old and new). It is not a break with Jewish ritual, but its fulfillment. We read in Exodus 30:7-8:
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